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Austria accepted her utter exile from Germany, recognised the dissolution of the old Bund, and consented to non-participation in the new North German Confederation of which Prussia was to have the unquestioned military and diplomatic leadership. Prussia annexed Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Nassau, Sleswig and Holstein, Frankfort-on-Main, and portions of Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria.
When the Duchesse de Polignac, the Comtesse Diane de Polignac, the Comte d'Artois, the Duchesse de Guiche, her husband, the present Duc de Grammont, the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, etc., fled from Paris, he and the Queen, as if they had foreseen the awful catastrophe which was to destroy her so horribly, entreated her to leave the Court, and take refuge in Italy.
Under Napoleon everything was overturned with astonishing rapidity: customs, manners, laws, were superseded Thus, at the battle of Ocana there were at least troops of the following States, viz. Warsaw, Holland, Baden, Nassau, Hesse-Darmstadt, Frankfort, besides the Spaniards in Joseph's service.
Of these seven, two came from Baden, one from Wurtemberg, one from Hesse-Darmstadt, one from Prussia, one from Bavaria, and one from Frankfort. Thus it will be seen that South Germany still kept the lead in the movement for German unity; and the president of the committee was that Izstein, of Baden, who had been known to Germany chiefly by his ill-timed expulsion from Berlin.
In the meantime, another of Bismarck's plans had been successful. In January, 1871, while the siege of Paris was yet going on, he induced the kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemburg, together with Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and all the other little German states to join Prussia in forming a new empire of Germany.
Peter III., son of a Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, is a Romanov in the proportion of one-half; Paul, son of a Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, in the proportion of one-fourth; Alexander I. and Nicholas I., sons of a Princess of Würtemberg, in the proportion of one-eighth; Alexander II., son of a Princess of Hohenzollern, to the extent of one-sixteenth; Alexander III., son of a Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt, to the extent of one thirty-second; and the late ruler, Nicholas II., who married a Princess of the House of Oldenburg, to the extent of one sixty-fourth.
How all these men would present arms, and salute my children, if they had been born to a throne instead of obscurity! How they would bow and bend, if I were called Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the lawful wife of the prince! The crown prince was scarcely twenty-one years of age when betrothed to her.
He had steadily opposed the policy of Metternich, had done his best to induce the universities to co-operate in a common German movement, and had tried to secure internal liberties for Hesse-Darmstadt, while he had urged his countrymen to look for the model of a free constitution rather to England and Hungary than to France.
In Hesse-Darmstadt, the Estates again met in 1832; the liberal majority in the second chamber, led by von Gagern, E. E. Hoffmann, Hallwachs, etc., protested against the resolutions of the confederation, and the chamber was dissolved.
They included the rulers of South Germany, as well as Dalberg the Arch-Chancellor, who now took the title of Prince Primate, the Grand-Duke of Berg, the Landgrave, now Grand-Duke, of Hesse-Darmstadt, two Princes of the House of Nassau, and seven lesser potentates. In some cases German laws were abolished in favour of the Code Napoléon.
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